


Rider

by yuletide_archivist



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-11
Updated: 2004-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shadow finds another piece of his destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rider

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fromherashes

 

 

Eventually, Shadow went back to the States.

He worked at a gym in California for a while, but he got bored with it, the everyday monotony of the job just getting to him after a while. After you stop the end of the world-- or, he thought, one end of the world, at any rate-- things get anticlimactic. And too much routine, even now, felt too much like prison.

So he traveled some, moved when ever he got itchy, and it wasn't too bad. Sometimes he'd glimpse someone he thought he'd recognized. He'd seen Easter at the airport in San Francisco once. She had looked pretty good.

He saw the horse in Montana. He hadn't really wanted to go to Montana, but weather had delayed the flight to Maine, so he was in Montana. On a whim, he'd decided to stay for a couple of days.

His whims turned out useful sometimes, since he'd met Wednesday.

This one wasn't looking to pan out so well; so far the only interesting, _really_ interesting thing, he'd seen was a horse, in the parking lot of a gas station five hours' drive from the airport.

It was _looking_ at him, through the tiny window of its trailer. Like it knew him.

"Hey," the guy behind the counter said. "You gonna be there all day?"

"Nah," he said, and paid for his gas.

He went out, and looked at the horse, or what he could see if it in the trailer. Its coat was dark grey, or black, and it seemed...smart. Almost calculating.

"You like him?" the guy driving the truck said. "He's an Icelandic horse. Bloodline's real pure."

"He for sale?"

"Dunno," he said. "I gotta drop him off at this ranch. I've driven him from Virginia, got to know him pretty well. He's a good horse. Quiet, but he's real fast, kind of a slick customer."

"Slippery?"

The guy grinned. He was young, black, tall, with a University of Virginia baseball cap. "Yeah."

"You on summer break?"

"Yeah." He reached up and scratched under the baseball cap, and Shadow could see he kept his hair short, tight curls just above his scalp. "I worked with horses all my life-- my dad owns a ranch-- and they asked me if I wanted to drive him out. He sure hasn't been any trouble." He opened the door of the trailer. "Check it out," he said, gesturing at the horse's feet. "Extra toe on every foot."

"Huh," Shadow said, getting closer. "That hurt?"

"Nah, it doesn't bother them. It's real rare though; once in a while you'll see a horse with one extra toe, but hardly ever four."

Shadow nodded appreciatively. The horse wasn't as bulky as a workhorse, but it didn't have the exaggeratedly slender legs of a racehorse either; it looked like it could kick your ass pretty handily, if it ever had cause to. It was placid, though, especially for a stallion; it regarded Shadow calmly with its deep, dark eyes. The damn horse looked familiar, familiar the way Mr. Nancy had felt when Shadow'd first met him; the way Easter had felt in that airport.

"I'll let you two be on your way," he said.

"You want me to let you know if he's for sale? I could take your number...."

Shadow shook his head.

"All right." The guy closed the door up again. "But you look awful interested in him."

"He's an interesting horse," Shadow said. "But I'm not really in the market."

"Did I tell you his name?"

Shadow shook his head.

"Icelandic horses always have Icelandic names," he said. "This one's called Sleipnir, like Odin's horse-- because of all those extra toes."

Shadow nodded appreciatively. "Nice horse."

"Yeah." The kid hopped into the truck, and Shadow went back to his rental car.

The public library was right next to his motel, so he went in and hopped on the Internet. Sleipnir: Odin's horse, the father of all horses. Eight-legged, though that could just mean extra toes. Could travel over sea, in the air, and into the lands of the dead.

Shadow thought about Laura, and the sky, and wondered where he wanted to go.

He watched a couple bad movies on cable before he went to bed.

When he was just on the edge of sleep, he heard Wednesday's voice. He couldn't tell which Wednesday it was. _I never quite trusted that horse. Loki's kid, you know. But he was damn fast. And he'll take you anywhere you want to go. If you can figure out where_ that _is._

In the morning, he asked the girl behind the desk at the motel if she knew of any ranches in the area. She did, and gave him directions to a couple.

The horse was standing in the front yard of the second place, quietly clipping grass.

Shadow watched it for a while, standing back behind the barbed wire fence. It was an overcast day, and the dark grey of the horse's coat reminded Shadow of storm clouds.

"I had a couple kids," Low Key said once, back in their cell. "Only one of 'em ever turned out any good, though. The rest of 'em are all just as rotten as their dad."

"I guess you're the kid that turned out good," Shadow said, and the horse's ears flicked. "Did it ever bother you, knowing your dad wasn't really a horse?"

Sleipnir grunted slightly.

"Yeah, my dad wasn't all he was cracked up to be, either." Shadow said, and curled his hand around the round orb of Wednesday's glass eye in his pocket. "We got that much in common, anyway."

He couldn't think of much else to say to the horse; magic steed or not, it was still a horse, and Shadow had had enough difficulty sometimes talking to gods, much less their horses.

"Hey there," a voice said behind him, bright and friendly with just the thought of a threat behind it. "Th' boy who dropped him off said there was someone in town looking that horse over. Was it you?"

"Yeah," Shadow said. He turned around and faced a heavyset woman; she was tall, big-boned, dark-skinned for a white woman. Something about her face unnerved him. "He's a nice horse."

"I ain't gonna sell him, that's for sure," she said empatically. "He's like family."

"Is he?" That was what he'd seen in her face; just a little of Low Key's familiar features. Huh. "Well, I wasn't planning on buying him. I was just driving around, and figured he and I would have another little chat."

"Well, you've chatted," she said. Her voice wasn't quite a threat.

He nodded and went on his way.

He drove out again to the ranch that night; the moon was full, so he killed the headlights about a half mile before the ranch.

The horse was still in the same field. Low Key's girl must not have gotten her dad's looks. He walked up to him quietly. "Sleipnir," he said. "You my father's horse? Or did you belong to Wednesday back in Iceland?"

The horse didn't answer. Shadow lifted one of his big legs high and stepped over the fence. He didn't really know how to ride, but he swung his legs up anyway, and the horse let him mount.

"Come on," Shadow said into his mane. "Let's see how far we can go."

Sleipnir put his head down, and flew.

 


End file.
